10 Gigabit Ethernet is an increasingly popular communication standard, with a nominal data rate of 10 Gbit/s. One form of 10 Gigabit Ethernet is IEEE 10GBASE-T, used to provide 10 gigabit per second connections over four pairs of unshielded or shielded twisted pair copper wires. It is desirable from a manufacturing, deployment and testability point of view to have a mechanism to automatically identify and categorize channel faults in high-speed Ethernet systems, such as 10GBASE-T rather than manually inspect them. One source of faults often relates to cross-pair coupling between adjacent pairs of wires. Extreme cases involve actual short circuits between the pairs.
What is needed is a high-speed and low-cost manner of carrying out high-speed Ethernet cable diagnostics between respective pairs of wires without the need for manual intervention or inspection.